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Is Technology Going to Be Savior for Gun Law?

There are so many issues surround gun law today, regardless of which side of the fence you prefer to sit on…gun control or gun rights. But one thing everyone agrees on…less violence would be ideal.

From all the statistics and reports supplied by the NRA and many other groups, controlling guns isn’t the answer…only criminals figure out how to get guns when there are too many gun laws. And when there are crimes, many times the public doesn’t want to come forward because of all the legal and safety issues that could result from talking. No one seems to have the right (or balanced) answer…or do we?

With the exponential development in technology for everything, one area that is growing incredibly fast is video. Everyone has it available in their hands (their smartphones) and more and more people are carrying (or wearing) wearable cameras, such as GoPro. Even the police officers in some cities have made this a requirement as part of their uniform to help both officers and the public in their enforcement of the laws.

So let’s fast forward a few years. As rapidly as technology has advanced, Google predicts that “video searches” will surpass text searches sometime in 2016. That means more people will be searching for videos than they will by looking for some type of document…YouTube (owned by Google) will become the number one search engine. This is further evidence that the public is not only armed with video capability, they are pretty good at being able to use it. This will change the game for gun laws…

For example, right now if there is an altercation and a shooting, both sides (gun control and gun rights) jump into action defending their side of what possibly happened. If you weren’t there, the evidence is circumstantial most of the time with pieces of hard evidence. This makes both sides “right” to the degree they want to build up their arsenal of defense. But what if there was video of practically every event that happened? What if citizens and others had cameras rolling almost all the time and captured a good percentage of these events? What if we could actually “see” what goes on in these altercations?

For one, it would allow us to focus on the facts and try to figure out the motives much easier. Second, it would eliminate the circumstantial evidence issue as we would have live video of the event. Third, it would help us “learn” from these situations to better protect ourselves and fellow citizens and give us the vehicle for better training. Fourth, for the few bad apple police officers, it would help weed them out of the force much easier. Finally, it would make crimes much less attractive if every criminal knew they were being videoed…even with a mask you can identify the suspect.

This is just one example of where technology could be the rising start to help both sides of the gun issues come together based on facts, not fiction or guessing. Technology could be the ultimate deterrent to criminals knowing the odds of them being caught went up dramatically. We may not need more gun laws and gun control…we just may need more technology! What do you think? Share your thoughts…